Seventy percent of arms seized, traced in Mexico came from US [The Washington Post] About 70 percent of the guns seized in Mexico and submitted to a U.S. gun-tracing program came from the United States, according to a report released by three U.S. senators Monday. [...] Most of those weapons — 15,131 — were U.S. made, while another 5,373 were of foreign manufacture but had moved through the United States into Mexico.

New Che Guevara diary published in Cuba [BBC News] A previously unpublished diary by the Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara has been unveiled in Cuba. His widow, Aleida March, said she had decided to publish the writings unedited.

CUBA: South-South Diplomacy Props Up Economic Modernisation [IPS ipsnews.net] The introduction to the guidelines document states that beginning in 2004, new possibilities were opened to Cuba for international integration in the framework of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), a bloc to which Cuba belongs, along with Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Antigua and Barbuda.

U.S. oil company demands contract from Costa Rica [Costa Rica Newspaper, The Tico Times] U.S.-based Mallon Oil Company invoked the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) to pressure Costa Rica’s government to sign a contract that will allow for exploration of oil and natural gas in the northern part of the country, according to the daily La Nación. Two letters sent in the past seven months by representatives of the U.S. company warned that Costa Rican officials would face “legal, economic and international consequences” if the 11-year-old exploration contract is not honored.

Peru’s capital declares itself a GMO-free zone [AFP] The city council, lead by Mayor Susana Villaran, officially declared the city of eight million a “territory free of transgenic and genetically modified organisms,” to protect the population’s health and preserve biodiversity and the environment.

The teenage miners of Bolivia [Al Jazeera English] An excellent feature (including videos) that follows the lives of two young boys who work in Bolivia’s mining industry. The reporters began chronicling their lives several years ago (when they were still children) and now present their struggles as 15 year old boys looking for a way out of desperate poverty and lives blighted by mining-induced ill health.

Brazil’s catwalks are too white, say protesters [The Guardian] The lack of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian faces on the catwalk at São Paulo fashion week has triggered protests and calls for a 20% quota of black models. “We cannot accept the world of fashion insisting on being a stronghold for the Eurocentric,” said Frei Davi Santos, the Brazilian race campaigner behind the protests.

Gold rush another blight to ailing Amazon jungle [AP] A gold rush that accelerated with the onset of the 2008 global recession is compounding the woes of the Amazon basin, laying waste to Peruvian rain forest and spilling tons of toxic mercury into the air and water. And in related news, Another Amazon activist killed in logging conflict [AP] A landless peasant activist was killed by a gunshot to his head outside his home in Brazil — the fifth murder in a month likely tied to the conflict over land and logging in the Amazon.

This was written by Flavia Dzodan. Posted on Sunday, June 19, 2011, at 9:24 am. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.